Once Upon a Memory
by emeral-sea
Summary: um...another horrible try at fanfic


The man grimly paced back and forth just outside the operating room. He was supposed to wait like any other family member of the patients out in the main lobby, but he was a special benefactor of the hospital itself. Through that line of connection, he was given permission to wait in the intensive care unit adjacent to the operating room.  
  
His feet shuffled back and forth in a restless motion. His hair matted to his forehead by perspiration. Once or twice he would ran his hand through his perfectly combed hair, marring his professional look. He would sighed loudly and return to his mechanical move. A nurse came and tapped his shoulder.  
  
"Sir, we have several patients that really needed some rest. Would you please not pace around so loudly? Or else I may have to ask you to leave."  
  
The man didn't even seem to notice the nurse by his side. His eyes were glazed with grief in a far away look.  
  
"Sir?''  
  
The man's head snapped, finally noticing the nurse.  
  
"How is she?"  
  
"Sir, I don't know. You have to wait 'til they're done."  
  
"I have to know how she's doing."  
  
"would you please. Sir," the blond headed woman strained her voice. The visitor's repeated action had started to take its toll on her. She partly wanted to let her voice slip and snap at him, but partly reasoned herself to be understanding of the man's circumstances. She plastered a polite smile on her face and firmly led the man to his seat.  
  
"Why don't you take a seat and I'll let you know the moment I hear anything new."  
  
The man dazedly let himself be lead to his seat. But as they were inches from the row of neatly piled seats along the wall, the man twisted his arm and broke away from the woman's grip. He dashed back to the double door that lead to the operating room. The nurse angrily opened her mouth to protest, but before she could say a word the doors shoved wide. Several nurses pushed a bed through the double door. An IV monitor followed just centimeters behind.  
  
The man hurriedly came and peered onto the bed. He caught a tiny glimpse of his friend beneath the piles of white linens.  
  
"Sir would you please get out of the way?"  
  
He stepped aside as he realized he was in the path of the moving bed and followed close behind. The bed stopped near the corner and the nurses get ready to set the break and plug in the necessary monitors for the patient.  
  
"How is she?" he asked one of he nurse who had followed the bed.  
  
"She's fine for now, but the doctors would know more about her condition. You'll be able to talk to one of them later on."  
  
"can't I talk to them now?"  
  
The nurse shook her head and said, "They're busy starting with another operation. But you can stay with her for now. The anesthetic haven't completely worn off so she'll might be out for another haft an hour or so."  
  
The man grimly nodded his thanks and headed back to the corner The nurses finished settling their new charge into her new position and one by one started to disperse. One of the shortest nurses stopped and felt necessary to inform the man of the routines.  
  
"There'll be nurses over at the desk to keep watch on her, so should there be anything just holler for them. They'll be more than happy to help. Oh, and is it all right if I leave the curtain half open? It's so much easier for them to keep an eye on her, you know, and still let the patient on the other side to have some privacy."  
  
"It's fine. Thank you," he nodded in acknowledgement for the information and left the nurse to go back pursuing her waiting task. He turned around to find someone had already pulled up a chair next to the bed. Gratefully taking it, he tiredly sank into the comfort of the soft cushion. He found the five hours of heart pounding had worn him out and silently mumbled a prayer of gratitude. Usually he was neither a religious man nor a man who has a prayer on his lips. Sure, he helped orphanages and charities, but he was not the type that was regularly seen at church. Five hours waiting outside the operating room and fearing every next second a doctor would come out and proclaim the worst possible news and then finding an a miracle amidst such chaos had changed his course of mind.  
  
He tiredly leaned back into the chair and took the opportunity to examine the patient on the bed.  
  
Underneath the piles of white linens laid a deathly pale woman seemingly in her early thirties. She has a gifted feature that would be the envy of the top models in the People Magazine. Though she looked no more than twenty- two, the wisdom in her traced through features and spilled out an aura of one that carry enough knowledge to be respected by those surrounding. The paleness now diminished her face somewhat, but not nearly enough to say she is ordinary to the untrained eyes.  
  
Her head was tightly bound by a roll of bandage and topped by a medical net to help seal it in place for the time needed. Messes of dried blood marred the smoothness of the ink strands of hair that spilled out from beneath and held the locks in odd clumps. Freshly brighter tone of blood was evident in irregular spots on the bandage. The white linen strikingly brought out the stains to the eye. Whoever had taken part in the procedure was excellent in mending wounds, but lack the art of tidiness. Whoever it had been, had barely taken consideration to the patient's self-image.  
  
The blankets partly concealed a bandaged shoulder on the patient's left. The gown buttons had been pulled apart to make room for the bandage during the operation, but was then left forgotten. The layers upon layers of blanket reached up to the woman's neck, barely revealing the injured shoulder. Her right arm lay on top of her resting body; apparently someone had moved it there for the sake of convenient. A tiny needle in the back of the hand connected to a slim line of tube winded its way back to the IV monitor. The machine hummed with an occasional slush of liquid. Added to the rhythmic pattern was a small brown box set on the drawer against the wall. Its cord connected to a sticker wrapped around the woman's index finger, just barely centimeters from touching the IV needle. The sticker glowed with a continuing artificial light. The brown box beeped irritatingly along with the red numbers, which constantly change according to the heartbeat of the sleeping patient.  
  
The man watched her with pains in his eyes. He longed to cry out her name and wake her up, but the word lodge against his throat and refused to come out. He slightly turned his head at a different angle to focus his eyes elsewhere but on her face. The sight of her in this state reminded him of what he almost completely lost. He closed his eyes and buried his face in the palms of his hands and listened to the rhythmic sounds coming from the machines.  
  
How long he had stayed in that immobilized position, he didn't keep track.  
  
A loud static sound came from one of the machines and the man bolted out of his seat. For a moment he thought it came from the heart monitor and he panicked. A nurse appeared in minutes and calmly assured him, "It's just the IV." His nerve pounded heavily as he dumbly moved aside to let the nurse took care of the static noise.  
  
He carefully watched the nurse push the buttons as if he was afraid she would make a mistake, although, he rarely was familiar with the medical procedure himself.  
  
"Mr. West." The man reluctantly turned away.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"I'm Dr. Troy. Your wife's surgeon."  
  
"She's a.friend," Mr. West quietly corrected the title and felt his face colored somewhat.  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought. Well, I want to inform you of your friend's current condition."  
  
"Is she alright?"  
  
"Her condition's stable.for now."  
  
"What," Mr. West asked with a worried tone. "What do you mean?"  
  
"We don't know what kind of effect her injury might produce. For now, we can only say she might end up with some kind of mental or physical drawback once she wakes up."  
  
"But you said she's fine!"  
  
"Yes, for right now. But she might--"  
  
"Can't you be more specific than that?" The young man cut in. His face was etched with lines of desperation and worried.  
  
"We. We've scanned her for brainwave patterns and sent them to the lab for analysis. It'll take at the very least 24 hours to get words from them. She's lucky to even be in this condition considering amount of blood she lost and that serious wound on her scalp."  
  
"What. What's the chances of her having this...drawback?"  
  
"Again, we don't know. We've never encountered a head injury like this."  
  
"Doctor? They're almost done setting things up," a nurse interrupted. Dr. Troy nodded and said to Mr. West, "I have a surgery right now, but I'll be sure to take a look at her tomorrow morning." The man defeatedly nodded and graciously said, "Thank you," as he remembered his manner.  
  
Mr. West went back to his position in the chair and resumed his post. Around haft an hour later the nurses claimed his friend was in a good condition enough to be move down stair to the patient's unit. By then, the woman on the bed had stirred from her drugged sleep. It was only for a minor second and went back to sleep again.  
  
They moved her down to a double bedroom. It was almost near midnight and the man left the hospital, leaving her in the care of the doctors and nurses.  
  
At 8AM the following morning, the patient on the bed cracked her eyelids opened. She blinked and adjusted her eyes to the streaming light coming from the window. The haft closed curtain opened and a nurse poked her head in. "Ah, good. You're awake. My name's Lisa, and I'm your nurse today. How are you feeling?" The woman on the bed hardly flinched or gave any indication she had heard the nurse.  
  
"Is she up?"  
  
"Yes, she's up," the nurse responded and pulled the curtain all the way back to reveal two newcomers. The older man was in a white uniform, accompanied by a younger man in a suite. They both gave her a smile, and the apparent doctor asked, "How are you feeling?"  
  
The young woman stared blackly at them, or rather it seemed she stared past them. Something about her face was out of the ordinary, out of the ordinary for any human at all. She bared not even a hint of recognition in her face.  
  
The smile on the young man's face fell. He leaned forward and shakily voiced, "Shayera?"  
  
The woman's brow squinted. Something about that word was familiar. She tried to recall her memory, but. She concentrated harder, but still.nothing. She shook her head in frustration as panic and confusion raced through her. Taking it as a dreaded sign, the young man desperately turned to the doctor beside him for an explanation.  
  
"Do you know who Shayera is?" the doctor quickly responded. She woman slowly shook her head.  
  
"You're Shayera. Don't you remember?" the man jumped in. Doctor Troy tried to pull the man toward the door, but the man protested.  
  
"What's wrong with her? Why doesn't she know name? What's going on?"  
  
"Mr. West, please. It's not good to agitate her this early. Lisa?"  
  
"Yes?" the nurse came over. "Try to see if she remembers anything," Dr. Troy quietly whispered. Once she nodded, he took off briskly down the hall and motioned for Mr. West to follow him.  
  
"We can't just leave her here. Where are we going?" the man ran to catch up.  
  
"Down to the lab Mr. West."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I think your friend has amnesia." 


End file.
